Esprit de She: Origins
by imagineit91
Summary: Being ripped from the world I knew without warning was more than uncomfortable. I could have used the warning to put clothes on, but the soul ripping? Could have done without it.
1. Chapter 1

**Hey guys, I'm back! After a depressive episode, I am ready to write again. It feels good. Please enjoy my new story as I work on the previous ones, because it is definitely not in the same writing voice I used back then.**

 **Cohesiveness is key.**

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I was successful in life.

I had an education, a career, a loving husband, and the idea of trying for a child was on the horizon, though I felt no rush to have one before I solidified my career as an engineer.

I was only 22.

I literally had all I could ask for, but there was a place in the back of my bright mind that kept calling me back down into a spiral of dark thoughts.

I was suicidal.

Only countered by my busy schedule and good marriage, I was still anchored to the reality that I could die and I wouldn't care if I did. I would care that my husband would be heartbroken, I would care that I left him no legacy to love anything else besides me in the world, and I would care that all that would be affected by my career in the world would never occur.

So, death would have to wait until I was ready to leave.

I kept myself busy with work and working out, only relaxing at home when I showered and slept.

Death never cared if one had a busy schedule.

Though it was not death that took me from my world, it must have been something much _more_ twisted.

Whatever _it_ may have been, it was more definite than death, but it had no name until it encountered my mind with a soul ripping attack.

I had been standing at the foot of our bed when it came, and my legs had no power to stand against the force that blasted into my very spirit.

Though I could not scream to get my husband's attention, he knew something of what was happening and the world that was turning dark had given me a second glimpse into the other side of the living where I had learned years ago where entities resided.

The figure before me looked humanoid, however it looked incomplete as far as looking like a human went. The horns that grew from its skull were wrapped in blood and muscle as some patches of its skin were simply covered in blood or the skin was absent. There was a new patch of skin growing around its chest like a glowing disk, but slowly adapting to the bloody figure. It was rather grotesque, but I knew who this one was for its eyes were the same as its living side.

If you haven't already guessed, it was my husband.

Long before me, he had developed a specific set of skills that gave him form here as a visible entity, however having a form here came at an unknown cost to humans on the flip side.

I never pressed the situation further, knowing that knowledge was forbidden to me at the time.

Now, it was free game.

He launched a bloody hand into my own translucent form where a blue-green gem was encased by white metallic vines and held tight to me using his other arm.

" _Where you go, I go too."_

His mind brushed against what was left of my damaged consciousness, a warm, soothing feeling, but it did not last once that vision vanished.

Everything was darkness and resounding pain for what felt like a long time. I supposed that is was it felt like to have your soul ripped from your body by what could have been anything in the flip side for what I knew.

I knew a lot about the flip side for being 22 and growing up in a small town in the Midwest.

I knew that even if I couldn't see entities floating on our side of living, I could still feel their energy as a small rub against my mind. I have had this way of feeling things for as long as I could remember, people who were like my husband I could direct myself like a compass to find them because they had echoes of power compared to normal people.

How else would I have found my husband? He would have seen me, different from those like him, but of the same capability.

" _Inexperienced_ ," he would say, " _but women don't usually have the aptitude, they are too emotional, and that is dangerous. Entities feed on emotion-fueled energy like it is their only food source_."

I was…different. It made me feel good and it made me do better in finding my purpose in the world. I recalled one of the first things he told me about the flip side.

" _Humans all have gifts. Most are physical, the rarest and typically most powerful are fully spiritual. We are inbetween, but the Council doesn't like that. They don't like us because we are a new variable that changes all the time._

 _Something had you hidden for a long time, or else they would have found you once your abilities developed, like me. Now it is my responsibility to hide you. My gift belonged to someone else in the family tree, he died using it a very long time ago, but they managed to track his family tree to find me._

 _You are gifted to move energy to your, when practiced, will, which is the only foil to my gift, which is to produce astronomical amounts of the stuff._

 _We are what I would like to call, meant to be."_

My injured soul did what it could to smile at the memory. We never actually practiced beyond learning to shield and protect myself using my own energies.

Which doesn't work against god-like entities, but, hey, not a lot of things do.

It took a long while for the darkness and pain to begin to subside, it's hard to tell time when your physical body is nowhere to be found, but when it did, there was actual forms to the world that were more…green. There were rock formations and puddles of water that I carefully avoided, noting that I had my body back again with absolutely nothing on.

Wherever I had been placed, there was no such thing as hot or cold. Or anything human. I saw balls of light that I recognized as wisps, but they left me to my wandering. There was nothing combative about my presence. I just wanted to go home to bed with my husband.

I realized with that thought that I didn't see my husband anywhere around, did he not make it with me?

I wandered on for what must have been miles of rock formations and water before I found something more than a wisp.

It was a bear, though it was deformed in a way that suggested it was not a good bear.

"Hello?" I said anyways, my voice was raspy and weak, "Can you tell me where I am?"

It peeped a golden eye open and yawned, "Don't bother me with stupid questions, human-but not-child."

Human-but not-child?

"Then what smart questions could I bother you with?" I asked, I know this place, but I could not think of it.

The bear-but not-bear slowly sat up to look at me with both golden eyes, "I enjoy riddles, answer me a few and I will not eat you, but I will also answer your question."

I nodded.

"What runs, but never walks, has a mouth, but never talks?"

Easy peasy, "A river."

"That was rather easy, a harder one. Thirty white horses on a red hill, first they champ, then they stamp, then…they stand still."

I was confused for a moment and bit my tongue. _Oh_. Bite.

"They are teeth."

The bear gave a yellow-toothed smirk, "You are not dumb, human-but not-child. My last riddle, and my hardest. If you pursue me, you will not have me, but if you stop looking for me, I will find you. What am I?"

I stood silent, the answer to me was obvious, but this was supposed to be hard?

"Are you…love?"

The bear-but not-bear laid back down, "Most humans never find love, but I see that extra piece of soul attached to your chest. It would have been so very tasty had you never known how you got it."

I looked down at the very visible white-silver wrapped gem centered between my collar bone and sternum.

"I would wish to meet you again, however as for your stupid question from earlier, I also do not. You are in the Fade, human-but not-child. Please leave me to nap."

I was slack-jawed, "You're Sloth."

"'It is obvious, I thought, now go before I change my mind about my next meal."

I walked away quickly, stumbling over rocks and puddles.

 _No_ , I thought, _you don't understand. You're not supposed to be real, the Fade is…_

Real. It was all very real now.

I was now a member of the Dragon Age fantasy of self-inserts.

"Fuck!"

I punched a rock formation, and unlike temperature, pain was very real here as well.

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 **Please review, it has been awhile so I'm sure there are improvements to be made.**


	2. Chapter 2

**I rewrote this at least twice trying to find the right direction for this story to go to be a little more original at least.**

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I found several things in the Fade to be extremely interesting apart from the game after I calmed down from punching rocks.

I needed to adapt. That was the first thing, I couldn't deny anything that happened to me.

Secondly, I couldn't find a way to cover myself to hide the new accessory on my chest after realizing it was an attraction for demons. I was just going to have to be naked all the time, I guessed.

Last, but not least…

My ability to move energy was supercharged, but controlling it was a different matter. It was as if every ounce of control I had learned on Earth was nonexistent and my shields were for the lack of a better word, useless. I was defenseless.

I spent months, nearly a year, just to perfect that one meditation exercise to even move on to creating an effective barrier against malevolent entities and yet there I sat in a corner of the Fade, practicing it all over again for what felt like a second lifetime before I could move on. I needed to protect myself mentally and physically from demons and mages alike. In the Fade, the sense of time seemed endless and I was going to take advantage of that.

Without the distractions of the physical world, energy, or magic here I suppose, was very willing to be shaped into whatever I wanted. Too willing. Every irritated thought was like a poison to nearby spirits and they fled or started to corrupt themselves into Rage demons until I calmed down and reassured their true purpose as a spirit.

I had come across a wisp of Curiosity that dissipated at my very presence, the spirits couldn't risk being near me after several incidents and it wasn't helping my situation as far as getting out of the Fade went. I knew I needed help from anything but a demon.

I had to reshape my way of thinking using the meditation exercise, don't feel, just watch. Learn. Do. Think critically rather than emotionally. Not anger nor joy could fuel my magic. That part was easy. It was purely mental practice I had already known and just needed to reinforce.

The hard part was bending the magic to my will intentionally, not on a whimsical thought. I needed some sort of resistance, but after much thought on why this was happening, I realized my physical balance was with my body on Earth.

Spirits in the Fade had no will, but they could shape it like I could.

There in the Fade, I was purely spiritual. I was as Sloth said, "Human-but not."

I was trapped until further notice, so I continued to practice controlling and moving magic through my spirit like a sixth sense until I recovered what skill I had lost. It wasn't much, but it was the very basics.

When I stopped corrupting spirits and blocked out my wayward thoughts, they started to not disappear on sight of me. Instead they brushed against my mental wards to say hello in the way that spirits do to other spirits.

I was simply a spirit now, stronger than most with the fact that I had free will, but they regarded me as one anyways. I could travel the Fade freely unlike them, as they found themselves unusually attracted the specific spots where the Veil was thin.

I watched the other side once with a small group of Curiosity wisps, I saw fighting and bloodshed in a stone tower that was eating at the Veil like moths on a wool garment.

The wisps chattered, asking questions like they seemed to do before one of the weaker points in the Veil began to vacuum the closest wisps out to the other side where they became violent due to the shock. I herded the remaining wisps away from the area and watched as weaker demons flooded the area to join the fray. The negative energies that demons tied with them gave me a headache when they gathered large groups like that.

When the fighting stopped, the metaphorical moths stopped eating at the Veil, but it remained to be a hotspot for demons to come through.

It wasn't too long after that incident that I ran into my first dreamer, an elf mage apprentice with white hair and blue-green eyes. She looked similar to my very first elf mage origin, minus the facial tattoos and dark makeup. I named her Morgana, not knowing about Morrigan coming along later.

I accidentally wandered directly into her dream thinking it was another viewpoint into the other side. I knew I was at the mage tower in Ferelden based off the reflection in the Fade, but I hadn't noticed I was in someone else's territory until I saw ghost images of young elven children running around a vhenandahl tree.

She saw me immediately and panicked, her alienage tree starting to wither in accordance to her fear as she hid behind it. A childhood dream.

"Begone, demon!" she shouted. Her attempt at banishing me caused a small breeze that ruffled my bangs. I didn't realize I was that strong compared to her.

I put a hand on her tree and willed it to live by pushing my energy into it, buds began to sprout. She didn't notice.

"I'm no demon, just a wandering spirit," I tried to tell her, but there was a stronger breeze as she tried to banish me again. The dream was going dark, was she waking up?

"You will not try to entice me again," she growled, did she think I was a Desire demon because I wasn't clothed? "I said leave!"

The tree started to crumble despite the efforts I gave to keep it alive, and so I turned around and walked away from the mage as she woke up from her efforts to banish me. I could see a vague image of templars dragging her out of bed and decided against helping that particular origin story.

I needed one that would listen, and unfortunately I knew they all had trust issues except for one.

The never released Human Commoner origin.

I just wouldn't have known what to expect from them.

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 **Please, tell me your thoughts. I know the origin is a Redcliffe Farmer with a different type of motivation to joining the Wardens that didn't fit the tone of the other origins. That's my base platform for them.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Ooh, five followers! :) Thank you.**

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" _You can layer up your shields to make it stronger, but it will definitely make you harder to hide."_

" _Isn't there anything else I can do to defend myself? Like shoot bolts of energy at an entity?"_

 _His laugh is hearty, "No, no bolts of energy that I can teach you. Now try again to make your second layer…"_

I focused all my energy I could afford to take away from my shields and gathered it in my arms until they shone bright with white energy. Now how did I let it go? I waved my fingers around. Nothing.

I tried mentally pushing it out and the energy wavered, but still nothing.

"Kamehameha!"

I felt so stupid doing it Dragon Ball-Z style, because there was still no result.

I rebalanced my shields, I have managed to make three layers so far. My form was slightly glowy and considering my sight for seeing energy was very poor, I thought it was a good sign. I was getting much better at it with so much time available never sleeping or going to work.

Navigating the Fade took seemingly forever, especially from what I assumed was the Mage Tower in Ferelden to Redcliffe, and so I tried to entertain myself.

Spirits, including demons, still eluded me. I assumed it was because of my energy type.

" _Energy types aren't as easily read as someone's aura. The same goes for spirit animals."_

" _Can you read mine? You said I was a light green when we first met."_

Green. I snorted. I was so sick of that color by this point.

" _It will take awhile, let's lay down."_

 _His eyes close and his large hand wraps around my tiny wrist. We lay together for thirty minutes before his eyes open again. His mouth quirks upwards into a small smile._

" _A white jaguar."_

" _So what does that mean?"_

" _You're something else," he laughs, "I remember white is rare only second to black. Natural lie detectors and near impossible to control. Most entities will probably die if you try to take them upon yourself. Spirit animals represent your strengths, you could be very adept at using energy, stronger than me if you trained hard. Jaguars are more aggressive than tigers."_

" _Would I have ever found that out on my own?"_

" _I'd hope that you will never have to awaken your spirit animal or use energy like I did, sweetie."_

As I pulled myself away from my memories by walking on, I let out a deep breath to avoid crying and losing control over my shields. I didn't hate how the Fade allowed me to relive memories, I hated that I was forced to relive them without him.

The gem in my chest gave a slight glow as I felt the pain of being homesick. Did that mean he felt me too? I wouldn't know for sure, but it did make me feel better as it did something other than be dull. The pain still lingered as the glow passed.

I still had to remember my goal, find Redcliffe.

Yet now would be the best time to say, as a spirit in the Fade, I never would reach that goal.

I traveled too far south, straight through the Korcari Wilds and into Ostagar. The Veil was so irritably thin that demons had left their negative energies as a waymarker for others to follow. Stupidly, I followed it.

I managed a fourth layer of a shield to block out the pain just a little more, but I shone just a little too bright.

In the game, the mages were in the Fade, scouting for interfering demons or something. I couldn't remember, but they found me.

"A spirit!" one mage cried, almost hopeful.

They were almost exuberant in their discovery of something that wasn't a demon. I just stood there, not speaking because losing focus would cause my fourth shield to fall.

"Who are you, spirit?" another mage asked, I shrugged my shoulders, "Will you aid us?"

I nodded.

The mages cheered, but I began to have a terrible feeling in my gut. They all began chanting.

Not. Good.

My sight was getting rather bleary as the Veil pressed upon me like a heated blanket that was just a little too hot.

Then my world knew pain and darkness once more.

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 **Short, but hopefully sweet. I'll try to manage updates at least once a week. R &R.**

 **ScepticalOne, I saw your reviews and do not worry, the chapter will be longer as the story goes on. Details are very important in my stories.**


	4. Chapter 4

" _The funny thing about souls, is that unless it is stolen or sold, they always grow back. Tear a part of it off and a new piece will grow in its place like a scar. Never the same as before."_

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I opened my eyes to a room that was familiar to only myself.

I called it the Red Room.

The carpet was dark red, the paint on the walls was dark red, the stain on the round wooden table was dark red, and the sky outside the windows on the right side was one of the darkest shades of red I'd ever seen when the candles were lit.

Exactly as they all were this time. There were candles on the tables, two types. The tall, slim candles in the golden candelabras with three arms, and the shorter and thicker candles on bronze plates.

Each table had a candelabra in the center and three shorter candles along the edge closest to me.

There was a dark, shadowed painting at the end of the elongated room with a dark gold frame with the most delicate ornaments. I never stepped closer. I never squinted for a better look. I left that painting alone every time I was led into the Red Room in my dreams.

I also never moved until I woke up.

The first time I had been to the Red Room, I turned to one of the tables and one candle snuffed out.

Then they were all snuffed out at once.

I had never felt such an amount of fear outside of the Red Room until that night I first dreamed of it.

I was forced onto my back into what I could only describe as sleep paralysis as terror choked my air supply and suffocated my senses with darkness. Pressure built between my ears until I could no longer hear.

I was forced to have visions of drawings, simplistic enough to recreate on post-it notes but odd visions in my mind's eye was usually not good.

Though the current visit to the Red Room was different.

The first difference was the sense of being in the calm of the storm, the space outside the windows was raging different shades of red.

The second was the occasional tremor that cracked the windows and shook the painting.

The third was, as the painting fell from the wall, I heard a cracking noise. It wasn't the painting, it was the windows.

The storm was raging harder and shaking the room harder.

I fumbled over to the painting, ignoring every basic instinct I used to have to avoid learning its subject, and tried to hold it up to the candlelight.

Another tremor proved that task to be much more difficult. The painting itself was at least 30 x 30, a perfect square, and the golden frame was heavy in my arms.

"C'mon!" I grunted, shifting it to sit against the wall and moved to grab a candelabra from one of the tables. The wax had melted so far down around the bottom that it had stuck to the blood red wood of the table. I pulled it up with mere strength, and the flames were running dangerously low on wick.

The next tremor caused the liquid wax to spill over onto my hand, but there was no burn as it cooled off to become solid again.

The light from the candles was weak, but just enough to see the faint features of a nude portrait.

Who was it?

I assumed it would be me, but I didn't recognize the person in the portrait as me. She was very…cute? Pretty?

She had very long dark hair and painted ivory skin. Her eyes were russet brown, very warm and smiling. Her nose was round and short, lips not plump but not quite thin pressed into a small smirk. Her body was of one who routinely exercised, lean and muscular with a small degree of softness around the hips. I noted my tattoos were missing on her legs.

Her arms were another story, her left arm was as fair and clean as the day was long. The right was covered in an unfamiliar wispy ink that _moved_. The painting was moving. I also never had that tattoo.

I backed away, but the portrait of the prettier me followed like a smoke. The following tremor brought me back to the ground where she hovered over me in a cloud of deep brown, ivory, and black particles.

It disturbed my vision and invaded my nostrils. Needling its way into my skin.

It sounded like it was screaming.

I was screaming.

The Red Room's windows shattered as the raging red-black clouds filled the room with lighting and the distinct taste and smell of blood.

Being electrocuted isn't pleasant, it left the feeling of getting sucker punched in every individual nerve possible and then again even harder in the gut. I was electrocuted over and over, but I didn't die. I couldn't die.

After what felt like a lifetime, the raging clouds began to disappear and my feet finally found ground on something warm and wet.

Warm, it felt so good to feel temperature again.

Wet, my hands and knees followed my feet onto the ground into a pool of blood. That didn't feel good to know.

Who's blood was it?

I didn't ask. I never did.

When I finally looked up and away from the puddle, there were bodies everywhere reeking of death. I puked. I hated dead bodies so much I never went to funerals.

It probably stemmed from the fact that no one felt the empty space that someone's soul was supposed to be there. Their energy was supposed to hum and brush against my mind, but there was nothingness instead. It was a vortex of displaced energy and fear because no one really wants to die, they have to accept it like the terribly ugly sweater from Great Aunt Georgina at family Christmas.

I gagged again as I noticed it was only human bodies around me in robes. The mages must have thought they were summoning a real spirit and it killed them to give me a new body here instead.

However, I choked down another dry heave to examine the bodies closer, there were deep cuts and stab wounds on each of them.

I used the thought that they were already dying to spare my conscience and moved my next thought to getting cleaned and covered up. My arrival was not the cleanest as I was covered in blood up to my forearms and knees.

I was still in the Ostagar camp and the background noise of clanking metal and voices suggested I was not alone. The voices sounded human at least, but I knew better than to be seen.

There were tents nearby and I checked the closest one to find a metal bucket with a rag. The water smelled normal, a bit dirty, but it got the blood off. There was a servant's gear and leather shoes in the next.

No socks to be found in the third and last tent. There was a coin purse with several silvers and a few coppers. I also found an olive green scarf to cover my head and braid into my hair with and a steel dagger that could be hidden in the apron of the servant's gear.

I thought myself to look normal enough to pass as a servant to step outside of the area where the Fade mages stayed and were slain.

"Hey, you!" someone called out. I looked around as well as a couple other hurried elves did.

Elves, they were so slim and their ears were indeed notably long and pointed.

I shook my head as a man in heavy iron armor started towards me, he had a dark beard growing and a strong jaw.

He moved right past me, like he didn't even see me.

He started talking to one of the male elf servants and I quickly hurried on to leave Ostagar.

I had to find Flemeth and I couldn't waste time or endanger myself in battle.

There was nothing I could change at Ostagar.

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 **Finally out of the Fade. I'm happy to interact with you guys as readers when you leave reviews!**

 **Sierra (Guest): It's okay to be sad, it's like finding a new show on TV then learning you have to wait for weekly episodes. I hope you stick around to see what happens every week. :)**


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